ginger gibson of "politico." and mike lillis of "the hill." >> we are going to look at the fiscal cliff first. this egg, hard-fought battle over spending and cuts. you have plenty of experience in this arena. the fiscal cliff comes along. you get a deal. you voted against it here and you were the only democrat to vote against it. why did you vote against it? >> there were several of us on the democratic side that voted against it. my sense is that if we are going to really move this country forward, we have to start dealing with the big challenges we face -- physically, socially -- now, not do these short-term fixes. a long-term fix would have included something that would have disposed of the so-called fiscal cliff. i believe this short-term deal creates three new fiscal cliff's, which is not the way you want to run -- whether it is a small business on main street or the largest economy in the world. we need to get to the point of dealing with the biggest deficit in the country, the jobs deficit. to me, this bil